Feeling uncomfortable in the nineteenth century

The historical excision of the nineteenth century from the master-narrative of Islamic art history has had a number of far-reaching consequences. This essay takes an overview of the current status of nineteenth-century materials in the overarching story of Islamic art, analyzing the aspects of the century’s artistic production that have started to be tentatively admitted to the canon in recent years, and attempting to find some answers to the obvious question: what is so wrong with the nineteenth century? In the second part of the study taxonomic and ethnographic concerns, encoded into the discipline during its formation in the nineteenth century, are explored to expose the intellectual underpinnings, and inadvertent consequences, of the medievalization of Islamic art.